Detect poison
Detect poison is a divination spell that senses poison in a creature or object. Effect You determine whether a creature, object, or area has been poisoned or is poisonous. You can determine the exact type of poison with a successful Wisdom check (DC 20). A character with the Alchemy skill may try an Alchemy check (DC 20) if the Wisdom check fails, or may try the Alchemy check prior to the Wisdom check. The spell can penetrate barriers, but 1 foot of stone, 1 inch of common metal, a thin sheet of lead, or 3 feet of wood or dirt blocks it. Notes Detect poison is one of the simplest, most specialized detection spells in 3E - it finds poison in one object or creature. It's usable in an adventuring sense mostly because it calls on such minimal resources - does it have much use in a larger campaign sense? First, the single big drawback of Detect Poison - it's got an Instantaneous duration, so can only check one target per spell. Using this for large-scale scanning of areas isn't going to work too well, unless one creates a continuous-use magical item, and it's something of an open rules question as to whether that'd even be feasible. For the moment, the short duration is being taken as a given limitation. Even so, there are a few possible uses for Detect Poison. The first and simplest is as a diagnosis tool. Even if you have something like Neutralize Poison available, using a simple cantrip to verify whether it's needed is a reasonable and viable alternative to simply casting the spell. And in situations where curative magics aren't available, Detect Poison is a very smart tool to use prior to hypothetical nonmagical measures - which could range from inducing vomiting for ingested poisons, all the way up to bleeding and amputation for poisons introduced by injury. Using Detect Poison for preemptive prevention is, unfortunately, more difficult. The problem here lies in the need to check every possible delivery vector - every dish and wineglass, every blade and needle, every surface that might be smeared with contact poison. Spell use in this area is likely to be limited to spot-checking efforts, and would mostly suffice to drive up the price of a poison-driven assassination somewhat (as divination-blocking magics, such as Nondetection, are reasonably easy to acquire) rather than eliminate them entirely. (The thought of blocking Detect Poison does bring up an interesting philosophical question, though. A "thin sheet of lead" is said to block the spell - but lead is also an environmental poison. Does the spell ping on the presence of the lead barrier? Does the answer change depending on whether the caster is a 20' tall storm giant, as opposed to an 18" pixie?) The final use of Detect Poison, in a far-reaching sense, also uses spot-checking - in this case, for cases of accidental poisoning. It's not a stretch to imagine the spell being used by health and safety inspectors in a "ubiquitous magic" world to examine restaurants, industrial plants, garbage dumps, environmental reclamation sites, and any other place where neglect or carelessness would result in Nasty Stuff being built up. Again, making sure that every potential threat is always poison-free is prohibitively expensive... but a quick, reliable tool for use in periodic inspections would be an invaluable aid in any era of industrialized magic. Category:Divination spells Category:1st level assassin spells Category:0th level cleric spells Category:0th level druid spells Category:1st level paladin spells Category:0th level sorcerer and wizard spells